Torquil Cottage

The picture of Torquil Cottage, unidentified at that time, as sent to the Link by local historian, Malcolm McCarthy

This account of our family home in Trebetherick has been prompted by the publication of a series of wonderful black-and-white photographs from the end of the nineteenth century, reproduced in the Spring 2021 issue 228 of The Link. My clever sister, Charlotte, identified the back of our Cottage depicted in two of these photographs! Several giveaways: the disposition of the windows – though one of these is now a dormer; slight arching over the ground floor window and outside door; the low wall separating the property from the semi-detached cottage next door – Whalley Cottage (though it might not have had that name then). Part of this rather rough and ready dry-stone slate wall, nearest the cottages, still stands. My great-aunt Miss Elsie McCorkindale bought

the cottage and the parcel of land on which it stood in 1908, from Dr Theophilus Hoskin, of Brea House – so only ten years after these photos were taken. By 1911 the big house she had built at the end of her land furthest away from Daymer Lane, was completed, and named Torquil. Daymer Bay House and Daymer House were constructed at the same time, it is said from elvan stone from the now disused, but still visible, quarry on the eastern face of Brea Hill. So this appears to have been the start of the twentieth century development of Trebetherick. Between Aunt Elsie’s land and the much bigger property of Daymer Bay House closer to the beach sprang up a small building, now much enlarged (named Angus by the Visit our website - www.stminverlink.org 21